


All of Me Wants All of You

by mytimehaspassed



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Thieves, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 03:31:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3713275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mickey tells everyone that they met during a bank job in Buenos Aires.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All of Me Wants All of You

**ALL OF ME WANTS ALL OF YOU**  
SHAMELESS  
Ian/Mickey; Ian/Kash; Fiona/Jimmy-Steve  
**WARNINGS** : Violence; mentions of underage sex  
**NOTES** : (sort of, not really, a very, very deconstructed version of a) Leverage!AU.

Mickey tells everyone that they met during a bank job in Buenos Aires. He doesn’t say it often, doesn’t even relay many details, like how orange the sky was when Mickey had leaned over the bank counter, the piles of money there, sprayed with blood from one wayward shot, to kiss Ian on the mouth for the first time, Ian’s smile like a comma when he had pulled away, Mickey squinting into the waning sun, Ian’s red hair on fire. 

Or how - afterwards, after they had driven away in the less than adequate van, Ian’s hands almost shaking with excitement and adrenaline, stripping off the blood-stained clothes in the back with all of the money, meeting Mickey’s eyes in the rearview mirror, unable to stop himself from pressing the bills to his nose, inhaling deeply - Ian had kissed him back, leaning him up against the side of a wall on a stop somewhere near San Miguel, his palms flat on the warm brick, flush on either side of Mickey’s head. 

Or how - after they had holed up in a Uruguayan hotel for four days - Ian had slipped Mickey a sedative and made off with most of the score, leaving Mickey only enough for a first class plane ticket to Mexico. This is the part that Mickey leaves out the most often, the morning after when he had woken up and there had been no money, no note, no Ian, and it had taken him seven months to find him again, to track him down to a little flat Ian had bought in London, where Ian just smiled when Mickey slipped through the front door, Mickey’s gun trained on the spot just below Ian’s chin, the smooth throat there, and Ian had leaned against the couch, crossed his arms, and said, “What took you so long?” and Mickey’s finger had wavered, had itched, but never actually squeezed the trigger. 

And he definitely doesn’t talk about what happened next: Ian never apologizing and Mickey never asking him to, the hate sex, the make-up sex, the drinking, the smoking, the fights, the first few jobs they do apart, and then - finally - all of the jobs they do together, because it’s just easier, because they work really well together, because it just makes sense. 

Ian never gives back the money he owed Mickey, but every once in awhile he steals something for him: a Cezanne, which Mickey hangs in the bathroom of the Portland apartment because it matches the towels; a fourteenth century Yuan Dynasty vase, with beautiful blue and white porcelain that almost meets its end twenty stories below Ian’s Beijing condo; a bottle of 1787 Chateau Lafite, which they had finished one night after a particularly bad job, Ian nursing a broken nose and Mickey pressing the remains of his t-shirt into a gunshot wound to try and stop the bleeding. They drank straight from the bottle and Ian had said that it tasted like dirt and Mickey had laughed and called him a philistine and then kissed him sweetly on the nape of his neck, Ian rolling his eyes, his hands brown and flaking from Mickey’s dried blood. 

Sometimes, Mickey will lie or make up things that never happened or ask Ian to tell the story, the one he wants to hear, the one that isn’t the truth, and Ian will because he likes that story, because he likes the beginning and the ending, and because he likes the way Mickey smiles when he tells it. 

They never tell the story of how they actually met. 

It’s never been important. 

***

They go to California, drive down I-80 with the windows open like tourists, with Ian’s feet up on the dash of their rented Camaro, Mickey smoking and driving and taking sips from the bottle of Jack that Ian had bought with a fake ID that listed his name as Phillip. They steal sunglasses from a gas station when the attendant isn’t looking, stop at Fisherman’s Wharf and the Golden Gate Park, con their way into a tour of Alcatraz, stay in an expensive hotel for six days, long enough for the hotel staff to catch them having sex in the rooftop pool twice, long enough for Mickey to get significantly drunk and propose to Ian four separate times, down on bended knee and everything except for the ring. Ian laughs and says no each time and then laughs again and opens another bottle and this is something they’ve been doing for years, this push and pull, this back and forth, Mickey falling ass over teakettle in love with Ian and Ian pretending to know that he doesn’t know what that feels like. 

They never say anything to each other about it, and the next morning Mickey nurses a hangover at the continental breakfast, keeping his sunglasses on indoors and ordering enough mimosas to kill a horse. Ian plans a heist on the hotel napkin, a swift one-two-three punch that has him and Mickey scamming keycards and breaking into the rooms of those more fortunate guests, who are sure to be storing gifts in their room safes. Ian’s seen at least eighty thousand dollars worth of jewelry at breakfast alone. 

Mickey smiles when Ian shows it to him, pockets it, but doesn’t say anything else. Ian was reckless long before Mickey showed up, and Mickey has yet to curb this particular trait, reigning him in only once or twice in the last few years, only when he has to. 

Ian lifts a wallet in the chaos of the hotel lobby, shrugs when Mickey lifts an eyebrow, says, “Practice,” in that tone that he knows Mickey likes, and Mickey rolls his eyes and doesn’t say be careful, doesn’t need to, because Mickey’s job has and will always be to protect Ian, no matter the consequences. 

They take a cable car, blend into the crowd, and they’re just turning the corner, Ian asking him if he’s hungry, when Mickey sees the tail, an older, slim man who smiles at Mickey when he sees that he’s being watched. He places one hand on Ian’s wrist, his thumb stroking Ian’s pulse point, and doesn’t look at him, won’t look at him, just breathes, just nods. Neither of them say anything, they don’t have to, and Ian moves his hand lower, threads his fingers through Mickey’s, squeezes just once. 

And they disappear. 

***

There’s a fistfight in a bar in Texas; it’s the only way Mickey knows of to cause a distraction. 

Ian is angry for a while, using wet wipes to clean the blood off of Mickey’s face in the car on the side of some road, about two hours outside of Austin, angry enough that he isn’t speaking, hasn’t said anything since Mickey came back to the hotel with a fractured wrist and a split lip, telling Ian to pack his bags because they needed to leave now. Mickey watches him work, Ian biting his lip in concentration, and kisses him once and then twice, softly, gently, an apology. 

Ian says, “Call me next time, we don’t know what these people are capable of.”

Mickey says, “More of a reason not to call you.”

“Fuck, Mickey,” Ian says, and throws the wet wipe out the window, tears open another one, but doesn’t move to use it. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.” He pulls in a breath, another, and then looks away. “I did it long before we ever met.”

Mickey knows about the foster homes, the parents that were in and out of Ian’s lives because he was nothing more than a paycheck to them. He knows that for a while there Ian had only himself. He reaches over to place his hand on top of Ian’s. “I know,” he says, and then brings Ian’s hand up to his mouth, kissing his knuckles. “But now you don’t have to.”

Ian sighs, looks resigned. He opens his mouth and then closes it again, a thought passing through him. “How do you feel about the East Coast?”

***

They’re in DC, scouting possible marks during the Cherry Blossom Festival, huddling together against the chill wind. Ian blows warm air into his naked hands and Mickey scolds him again for not wearing gloves, Ian’s name slipping smoothly from his mouth, sweetly. Ian grins and tells him that gloves interfere with his skills, you know, and moves his eyebrows up and down obnoxiously, causing Mickey to laugh out loud in the least gracious way possible, scaring a few Asian tourists beside them. 

Ian points out a well-known senator, a disliked congressman, and Mickey hums under his breath, scanning the crowd. He sees her a few feet away, talking on a cellphone, looking distractingly beautiful in a modest pencil skirt, a designer jacket, her brown hands delicate around the handle of a Gucci purse. She looks past him, but he knows that she’s watching them, had seen her a few blocks up when they stopped at a Starbucks to get mochas, and before that, when they had left Mickey’s rented apartment, had seen her standing across the street feeding quarters into a meter. Ian had pointed her out then, a beauty among the bare trees, and he does so again now, fitting perfectly against Mickey’s chest, his lips soft on Mickey’s cheek, whispering, “Two o’clock,” and Mickey says, “I see her,” and wraps an arm around Ian. 

Ian doesn’t have any weapons on him, but Mickey does, and he’s more than willing to use them. Ian feels warm against him, solid, and Mickey watches as the woman finishes her call, placing her phone in her purse, walking right towards them. They’re both tense, Mickey can feel Ian’s heart beat fast against him, and he’s calculating the distance between them and this woman and what he can do with the knife in his boot, the Desert Eagle he has strapped to his side, when she looks directly at him and smiles, stopping only a few feet away. 

Ian slips away from him, and Mickey feels the loss of his warmth but doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move. 

The woman holds out her hand and Mickey doesn’t understand for one second, and then he sees the card that she’s giving him, a simple, elegant, business card with no name and only a phone number, and Ian’s the one who moves to take it, not Mickey, so the woman turns her smile to him. “When you’re ready,” she says, and then, “The both of you.”

She leaves. 

They fly to South Africa. 

***

It’s an offer for a straight job, they both know that as soon as they figure out that the phone number belongs to Frank Gallagher. 

They sit out under the sun at Camps Bay, Mickey burning like a tomato, Ian drinking fruity cocktails, and don’t talk about it. Ian shields his eyes from the sun with his hand until Mickey gives him his sunglasses, taking a sip of Ian’s glass, something that tastes more like juice than alcohol, making a face that Ian laughs at. Ian rubs sunscreen on Mickey’s nose, smearing his greasy palms on Mickey’s bare chest, and they kick up sand as they run for the ocean, pushing each other into the waves. 

They sit in the poolside bar in the afternoon as a storm kicks up, the cute bartender slipping them both her number despite the numerous public displays of affection they’ve shown, and Mickey asks Ian if he wants to go back to the room early, and Ian smiles and says yes, and they fuck with the door to the balcony open, listening to the howling wind, the beating rain. It’s pitch black in their room, but Mickey catches the angles of Ian’s face, his hands, during lightening strikes, and he says, “I love you, I love you,” over and over again, mumbled into the pillow beneath him, never loud enough to be heard. 

Afterwards, when the storm has calmed down, when the sun has peeked out through the clouds, Ian lights up a cigarette and asks Mickey if he could make it at a straight job.

“I don’t know,” Mickey says. “Probably not.”

Ian breathes the tobacco into his lungs, breathes out a cloud of smoke that’s hazy in the dim light of the room. He hands the cigarette to Mickey, who takes it. “The only thing I’m good at is stealing.”

Mickey leans over and kisses his temple, tastes sweat there. “If you don’t want to do it, we’re not doing it.”

“No,” Ian says, and turns to him. He looks soft there, looks young, and Mickey wants to take a picture of this, wants to keep this image with him always. “We should do it. It could be fun.” He smiles, but it doesn’t even reach his eyes. 

Mickey drops the cigarette into a bottle of water on the beside table, places both of his hands on Ian’s face, kisses him long and hard. He says it again, soundless, no words, I love you, I love you, I love you, and Ian responds in kind. 

***

There’s a whole team, and they are the last additions. 

They meet in Seattle, Frank the mastermind, V the grifter, and Mandy the hacker, and Mickey and Ian are apprehensive enough that they worked out six separate escape plans the moment they agreed to meet. They’ve been following them, Frank says between swallows of whiskey, have been learning some of their heists, the good ones, the bad ones, and - here Frank lifts a cigarette out of his pack, tapping it lightly against the table, placing it on his lips, lighting the end - they think that they can do a hell of a lot better.

Mickey looks at Ian, Ian looks at Mickey. It’s one slight, small nod from Ian, but it’s there. 

Mickey turns back to Frank, and smiles, but it’s dangerous. “We’re in.”

***

Their first job is a disaster. 

Their second is only saved by V’s quick thinking, her willingness to put herself in front of a bullet and charm her way out of it, her brilliant smile and beautiful face, her ruthless and cunning ability to make anyone quiver before her. After that job, she gets drunk off her ass on expensive champagne and admits that - at home, some place far from here - she has a husband and two baby daughters whom she loves more than anything.

She says, her face languid and soft, her hand resting lightly on Mickey’s arm, “They’re my entire world.”

Mickey doesn’t tell her how dangerous it is to divulge that information to a crew she barely knows, but only because one look from her, the regret she swallows once those words leave her lips, he knows that he doesn’t have to. 

Their third job is a little better, and Mickey and Ian spend a whole night casing an apartment in Montreal in Mandy’s van, fooling around when the mark goes to sleep with someone who is not his wife. Ian bites Mickey’s bottom lip and Mickey slips a hand up Ian’s shirt, his warm palm on Ian’s bare skin, and Ian kisses his way down Mickey’s torso, unbuckling his belt with little hesitation, placing his mouth there, slick and wet and smooth, and Mickey holds his breath so he doesn’t make a sound over the comms, but he’s pretty sure that they’ve all heard an earful by now, he’s pretty sure Mandy is on the other side listening, flushed and embarrassed and maybe a little excited, her hand creeping down the length of her stomach, slipping smooth beneath her pants. 

He bites his cheek when he comes, tastes blood on his tongue. 

The job after that, Mickey breaks two of his fingers and has to wear a splint for a few weeks, not used to the extra weight on his hand, not used to the awkward pull as he practices his Sanshou in the mornings, not used to the way Ian holds Mickey’s hands still between his own, kisses them softly, smiles when Mickey catches his gaze. 

The others ask him if he’s okay every so often, and slowly, slowly, Mickey begins to stop feeling surprised at their concern. 

The fifth job, Mandy hacks into the Swiss bank account of a multi-million dollar embezzler and deletes some zeroes, adds some (bad) off-shore investments, sends money to charity accounts back in the States, almost comes close to getting caught, but doesn’t, her grin lit by the glow of her computer screen. She loves the job, loves the money, but - even more than that - she’s the one with the most morals, wasn’t even tempted to pad her own bank account, didn’t even think about taking what wasn’t hers. 

Frank had asked her to work for them not just because she had the skills, but because she knew how to use them, and what to use them for. Ian jokes around later, asks her if they’re corrupting her, and she laughs and tells them that they can’t do something that’s already been done. 

The job after that, Ian doesn’t come home. 

***

It’s not another Uruguay. 

Mickey holds that conclusion between his teeth for a moment, almost relived, because if it’s not another Uruguay then someone took him, which means that someone can be held accountable, which means that he can fucking tear their throat out with his nails, dig underneath skin and muscle and sinew and rip their fucking heart out of their chest, bite and chew and swallow and make sure that they never breathe again. 

Mandy keeps trying the comms, keeps calling Ian’s name over and over again, and Mickey curls his hands into fists, tighter and tighter and tighter, until his palms start to bleed. 

V is looking queasy, looking apologetic, because she had been the one to see him last, had been with him when they were casing the mark’s little three-story walk-up in Brooklyn, when Ian found the safe hidden beneath a faux grate in the master bedroom (“Stupid,” Ian had said, “This is the first place I even looked.”) and tried cracking it with combinations he knew by heart (the mark’s birthday, his social, his parent’s anniversary). V had gone into the next room to try unlocking the computer when Ian exclaimed a soft little “oh” that had caught Mickey’s breath, that had caused his heart to race from seventeen blocks away, and V had asked, “Ian?” stepping back into the bedroom, but no one was even there, just an open window and a locked safe, and nothing broken, nothing missing, nothing askew. 

He hadn’t even put up a fight. 

This, more than anything, causes Mickey’s blood to run cold. He paces the living room of their office, the corporate shell that Mandy had bought by moving around some investments, and V notices the blood on his hands but doesn’t say a word and Mandy is still calling, “Ian? Ian? Ian?” and Frank drinks from the whiskey bottle on the desk and doesn’t look concerned, doesn’t even look afraid. 

“Fuck,” Mickey says, and his voice is nothing short of an open wound, raw, bare. “He never even wanted to do this in the first place.” He turns to Frank, and it takes every once of control to steady himself, to not lunge forward and grab him by the throat. 

He lifts his bloody hand, points a finger at Frank, shaking with adrenaline, shaking with something close to fear. He starts to say, “If he doesn’t make it out of this,” but his throat won’t even let him finish, gives out halfway through, won’t open, won’t close. He tries to swallow and can’t, he tries to breathe and it’s like there’s something stuck in him, something he can’t move even if he wanted to. 

He looks down, and he’s holding his knife, has it between him and Frank, the metal glinting under the phosphorescent light. He doesn’t even know when he pulled it out. 

Frank doesn’t look threatened, though, only nods once, only nods twice. “We’ll find him, Mickey,” he says, but it’s less than convincing, even to him. 

***

He dreams. 

It’s never a happy ending. 

***

Mandy starts to track aliases that Ian is fond of - Phillip, Carl, Liam - and gets a hit about forty miles away, somewhere close to Greenwich. She hacks into speed cameras, hacks into surveillance systems, and finds him in a gas station browsing the candy aisle, not real time, and she plays the fourteen second loop for Mickey, the flashes of Ian picking up a Snickers bar, heading to the counter, pulling out his wallet, looking directly into the camera. 

It’s a message, one Mickey knows by heart, one Mickey had whispered to him over and over again before they started doing jobs together, before they started this job together: if you’re ever taken, give me a sign, give a signal, I will come looking for you. 

Mandy says, “He’s alive,” and it’s a breath he didn’t know she was holding, and it swells something in him, makes him blink back tears. 

Ian is pulling out his wallet, looking into the camera, looking right at Mickey, once, twice, three times. His eyes are shaded in the grainy video, unclear, but his mouth is a straight line, his hands are heavy and solid, and he pulls out his wallet again, looks at Mickey, and Mickey just knows, he fucking knows who this is. 

Frank says, “We need a plan,” but Mickey is already out the door. 

***

Kash Karib had stolen Ian as a child. 

Ian had gone into a convenience store on the night of his sixteenth birthday, about halfway through a bottle of top-shelf bourbon his foster father had forbade him to touch, and had made a bet with himself to make it out of there with as many stolen objects as possible. He was on number three when the clerk grabbed the back of his shirt, shaking him until he felt dizzy enough to puke. 

Kash had stepped between them then, the other man threatening to call the cops, asking Ian if his parents knew what he was doing, and Kash had laid a palm on the clerk’s shoulder and told him that he would take care of this, that he knew just what to do with little thieves like Ian, how to scare them into never doing it again. And they must have known each other, because - with one shared look - the clerk had gladly handed him over, pushing him to Kash, hard enough that Kash had to break Ian’s fall, his hands warm on Ian’s skin, strong around him. 

Kash had smiled at him then, a beautiful smile, leading him outside with his fingers still curled around Ian’s bicep, and said, his voice low and swollen with amusement, “The point isn’t to steal.” 

His breath had whispered down Ian’s spine, making Ian shiver in the cool evening air, and he had leaned in even further, his lips almost touching Ian’s cheek, had said, “The point is not to get caught.”

At first, Ian hadn’t known what was happening, when Kash invited him to stay in his luxury penthouse condo, when Kash had started teaching him how to steal, how to get away with it, how to target the weak, how to pocket the score. At first, he had thought that this was what it was supposed to feel like, a family, a father, but then one day Kash had leaned over and brushed his mouth lightly over Ian’s and Ian had felt that swell within him, that quick punch of his heart, and he had known what it was, he had known what he felt that first time he saw Kash in that store and Kash had looked back and seen the potential in him, seen him for who he was and not what Ian could give him, had seen him. 

Kash had pulled Ian to him and Ian had let him and it was nothing more than kisses that first time, nothing more than Kash’s hands on his face, his chest, and Ian breathing hard in Kash’s grip, but - slowly - it had grown and - slowly - it had turned into what they both wanted. 

After that first night, Ian never saw his foster parents again, never went back to the system that had used and abused him, never gave it another thought, and in return Kash gave him clothes and a job and money and, more importantly, an education in picks, in locks, in steel and safes and banks. Nobody ever came looking for him, he never saw his face on flyers or missing persons websites, but then again he didn’t particularly care, never really wanted anyone to come after him, anyway. 

After all, he had never really known what family was until he met Kash.

After all, he had never really known what love was until he met Kash.

***

Mickey tracks them to Portland, Maine. It’s not even hard, Ian had been leaving bread crumbs since Greenwich, using credit cards in the names of Mickey’s own aliases, leaving little pieces of his luggage in motel rooms they hardly sleep in, renting a car with a fake ID that he’s been using since he and Mickey met. He wants to get caught, and not only that, he wants Mickey to catch him.

He drives for hours, for days, calls Mandy five or six times to check in, ignores Frank’s increasingly urgent texts, ignore V’s voicemails of support, of guidance, forgets to eat, forgets to sleep, loses time, can’t remember when he last had a decent cup of coffee. He counts the number of times he’s called Ian’s cellphone: thirty-seven. He breathes over the line and doesn’t leave a message, doesn’t say a word, doesn’t even ask him to come home. 

He almost catches them in a motel once, was maybe an hour behind, finds Ian’s toothbrush still wet on the bathroom counter, finds a discarded shirt (not Ian’s) on the floor by the bed, and he doesn’t think, can’t think, and he gets back in his car and revs the engine and picks one direction (West) and hopes that it’s the right one, but of course it’s not because Mandy calls a half an hour later and tells him that Ian just withdrew two hundred dollars at an ATM somewhere East, so Mickey makes an illegal u-turn and follows the trail. 

He drives all night and stops for breakfast at a twenty-four-hour diner near the highway, gets half of it down before he goes outside and vomits it all back up against his rear right tire, tired and hungry and jittery from the seven cups of coffee he forced himself to drink. He lights up a cigarette and sits in his truck for a while, watches the sun crest over the horizon, the pink and yellow and orange light that swallows everything it touches. 

He tries Ian’s cellphone one more time, and instead of the automatic voicemail ringing in his ears, there’s a breathy, almost apologetic voice on the other end, Ian’s sleepy little, “Hello?”

Mickey sucks in air through his teeth, surprised, and he swallows a few times before he trusts his voice. “Ian?” He asks, but of course it’s him.

“I’m glad you followed,” Ian says, and his voice is the same, warm, light. He doesn’t say where he is, he doesn’t say who took him, because he knows that Mickey has already figured it out, he wanted Mickey to figure it out, he wanted Mickey to know. 

Mickey doesn’t say anything, can’t, and he can hear Ian’s breath over the line, can hear the hushed sound of sheets pulling back, Ian getting out of a bed. He can’t hear anybody else in the background, he knows Ian wouldn’t be that cruel. 

“We have a job for you, for the team. Can you ask them to come?”

Mickey says, “Yes,” but it sounds raw, painful, and he can just see Ian wincing on the other end. “Where?”

“Chicago. I’ll text you the address.” He starts to say something, and then stops, starts again. “He needs your help, Mickey.”

Mickey presses a hand to his face, wants to stop thinking for a while, wants to stop running around, wants to go back home with Ian and sleep until he feels like moving again, wants to pretend that none of this has happened. 

He says, “Okay, we’ll be there.”

Ian breathes in, breathes out. “We’ll be waiting.”

He hangs up. 

***

Kash owns a house on the North side of Chicago, where he lives with his wife and two boys. Ian has been sleeping in the guest room for the past couple of days, but it’s painfully clear that he hasn’t been sleeping alone. 

Ian doesn’t look particularly apologetic about it, doesn’t look like he’s trying to hide the discarded clothes and rumpled sheets, hadn’t even said anything when he had brought Mickey up to the room to talk to him in private, his hands just a breath away from Mickey’s arm, not touching, just hovering over his skin. 

Mickey asks where Kash’s family is. 

Ian shrugs, looks away. “They’re staying at a friend’s until Kash knows they’ll be safe.” Ian sits down on the bed, places his hand on the sheets next to him; an invitation. 

Mickey doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything. 

Ian says, “I’m glad you came.”

Mickey swallows past the lump in his throat. “I’ll always come for you, Ian,” he pauses. “You should know that.”

Ian nods, his eyes shining with unshed tears. “I’m sorry I fucked this up. I’m sorry I ran away again.” He looks up at Mickey, looks back down at his hands. “He needed me.” 

And it’s unspoken: I come when he calls. 

And this is also unspoken: Mickey breathing out, crying, I needed you. I need you. 

I want you to love me as much as I love you. 

Please come home after this is done. 

They both know it, they’re both aware, maybe Ian more so than Mickey, so he doesn’t need to say it, doesn’t need to put words to what they are and how they act and who he wants them to be. Doesn’t ever need to voice what’s inside of him. 

He sits beside Ian on the bed, lets Ian kiss him, forgets not to touch him, forgets to push back, forgets not to say, “I forgive you,” his words swollen on his tongue, painful, forgets not to say, “I love you.”

Ian doesn’t smile, doesn’t say it back, moves so his mouth is aligned with Mickey’s, matching puzzle pieces, kisses him once and twice and doesn’t stop, breathes in and out, places his hands on Mickey’s face. Mickey inhales him, devours him, swallows him whole, says thank you with his lips and tongue and teeth, says please, says more, forgets not to be the fool. 

Forgets not to fall in love all over again. 

***

As always, Kash pissed off the wrong mark. He was sussed out on the third or fourth day, his team in even less time, and - predictably, as most groups of thieves and hackers and grifters and mercenaries go - they up and vanished, leaving him to hold the (rather large) bag of (damning) evidence, a captain about to go down with his ship. He sent his family off, hopped on a plane, and found Ian, the only person in the whole world that he trusts as much as himself. 

(He doesn’t say anything about the next part: the part where Ian and he spent a few days catching up, mostly in bed, Ian talking about Mickey with the most endearing smile on his face, Kash not mentioning his wife or children or the couple of convenience store chains that he owns as a front to launder money. They’re not running, but they don’t stop to see the sights, unless the insides of motel rooms count, the scratchy pillows and bland paintings and sheets with low thread counts, or the parking lots of schools and churches and municipal buildings, where Ian whispers in Kash’s ear to pull over and Kash does, palms Ian’s head as he leans over the shift knob to unzip Kash’s fly.

They eat, they fuck, they drive. They don’t talk about what they left behind. 

Except, maybe they do, because Ian mentions Mickey’s name enough times that at one point Kash leans over and kisses him on the mouth, roughly, angrily, biting down on Ian’s lip until he tastes blood, pulling back to wipe the back of his hand across his face, smiling dangerously, saying, “I just thought that your lips could be doing something better,” and Ian had swallowed down the blood, thick on the back of his throat, and said, “Fuck you,” which he did only moments later, hard, unforgiving, unrefined, uncouth. 

Ian doesn’t mention Mickey again until the team shows up on Kash’s doorstep, turns around to Kash’s surprised face and tells him that they needed help, they needed a plan, and oh have you met everyone?)

Frank knows the mark personally, a long time ago in another lifetime, one of the wealthy clients that Frank used to work for. He makes a face when Kash says his name, his mouth a grim, determined line, and he says, “There are far easier targets out there. I would cut your losses and move on.”

Frank had been against this whole op to begin with, had vehemently voiced his concern over associating themselves with someone who wasn’t on the straight and narrow - causing all of them to give him a look, a reminder that not so long ago, they were all nearly as crooked as Kash is, maybe less, maybe more, but definitely in the same ballpark - and it shows in his tone, shows in the self-righteous way he presents himself. 

Kash looks blank, unemotional, not altogether refined. “I appreciate your suggestion, but the losses are my family,” Kash says. “He’s threatened to expose everything to them and the police.”

“Leaving you divorced and in prison,” Mickey says, and he doesn’t even bite back the smile. 

Kash looks at him, but only nods, doesn’t rise to the bait. He clears his throat, and the room is weighted in embarrassed silence. 

Ian slips his hand beneath the table, fits his palm over Mickey’s warm thigh, squeezes gently, an apology or a warning, it’s hard to tell. 

Mandy says, her hands still on the computer keyboard in front of her, “He’s certainly got an impressive number of bank accounts.” She whistles. “With an impressive number of zeroes.”

“I don’t do bank heists,” Kash says, like it’s a rule that he’s always abided by, and Ian nods, a confirmation. “We were never interested in his money directly.”

“So that means that you wanted to physically steal something and then fence it,” V says. She smiles, brilliantly. “How delightfully old school.”

Kash smiles back, and all of a sudden he’s charming, handsome, the man that Ian fell in love with. Even Mickey can see that. “He recently made a transaction that doubled the money in the Cayman Islands bank account, so we figured that he would be too focused on securing that to think about the violin.”

V raises an eyebrow, confused, skeptical. “Violin?”

Ian grins, sliding a photo across the table, the light catching on the glossy paper. “The Davidoff-Morini Stradivarius, it’s worth three and a half billion dollars.”

“I’m not usually into instruments,” V says, placing her hands on the photo, “But this is a violin I wouldn’t mind keeping.”

“We’re not here to steal,” Frank reminds everyone. “We’re here to get Kash out of trouble as a favor to Ian.” He looks at Kash, sternly, almost paternal. “I hope you didn’t think that we’d help you pull off this heist.”

Kash wants to say something, badly, just to fuck with Frank, Ian can tell, but he doesn’t (thankfully), just shakes his head. “No, the buyer got nervous, ran off with the rest of the team. I just want to get out of this, want to show him that he can’t blackmail me.”

“Okay,” Frank says. “Okay.”

Kash exhales, places his hands on the table, palms down. He’s baring his soul, showing them everything, and he’s not happy about it, not even remotely okay with any of this. He says, “Can you help me? Please?”

And Frank says, “Don’t worry,” a smile spreading wide across his face. “I have a plan.”

***

They met at a club. He was going by Steve at the time, and she had always been Fiona, a girl who had grown up on the wrong side of town, and for a few moments there was a whirlwind romance, dinner dates and hotel rendezvouses and all-inclusive vacations and more than enough money to move her out of the shithole apartment she was living in and into something more apropos, pay her bills for weeks, months in advance. He was happy and - more importantly - she was happy, and for a short while there he was talking about diamond rings and extravagant proposals and spring time weddings, and she would laugh and place her hand over her eyes, embarrassed and excited, and he would slowly, slowly, pull her hand away and kiss her palm, asking her if she wanted to get married and - his voice hushed and swollen with apprehension - if she wanted it to be to him. 

It was idyllic, until it wasn’t. 

Steve ran into some bad investments, which Fiona later learned was just code for doing business with the wrong men, the kind of men that would break into your house at night and tie you to a chair, helpless, as you watched them beat the shit out of your (almost, soon-to-be, maybe someday) fiancee. They didn’t touch her, didn’t have to, because pain was a great enough motivator for Steve that he gave up everything, sold out his partner, told them the plans to roll their boss over for as much money as possible before giving him up to the feds, and it had a been a pretty great plan, too, if only Steve had chosen someone a little less connected. 

(“Any mark that has had bad luck like this before will be undoubtedly cautious from then on,” Frank says, with an expression on his face that reads little more than I told you so.

“I get it,” Kash says. “It was a stupid fucking plan. Can we move on now?”)

They came within an inch of killing him, stopped only because that was never the plan, because they were told not to. After they left, with little more than what Steve had on him, he had leaned up to whisper to Fiona - who was pressing her bloody hands to Steve’s face, crying, unable to do anything but scream for help, her voice raw and rough and broken - and asked her for one last time to run away with him, to marry him someplace far from here, mumbling it through a broken jaw, his swollen hand reaching out for hers, sliding smooth over her skin. 

She had turned away then. 

It was the last time he ever saw her. 

***

The plan’s simple, easy, far beneath everything they’ve accomplished so far. 

Mandy says, “I think it’s kind of sweet, actually. Like Romeo and Juliet or something.”

Mickey makes a face, says, “You know everyone died at the end of that play, right?”

Mandy doesn’t even bother turning in his direction, just holds up her middle finger.

***

Ian takes Mickey to Patsy’s Diner, where Fiona has been working for three years now. They pick a booth in the back, flush up against the red seats, facing the door, and Ian slides his hand over Mickey’s under the table, reassurance for either or both of them, he doesn’t know. Mickey doesn’t pull away, so he takes that as a good sign. 

They watch Fiona without really watching her, just a shadow skirting in and out of their periphery, filling ketchup bottles and serving waffles and flirting with her boss, and they order pie and eat it slowly, Ian taking bites off of Mickey’s plate when he’s not looking. 

It’s sort of the first date they’ve had since Kash, Ian says, jokingly, and then, actually it’s sort of the first date they’ve ever had. 

Mickey looks at him, a curious expression on his face. “We’ve gone on dates before.”

“Not like this,” Ian says. “Not where it’s just me and you and a crappy restaurant. Just talking, not about a job.”

“This is a job.”

“You know what I mean.” Ian sighs. “Where we’re not just eating or talking or whatever to fill the void in between fucking.” 

They both hear the cough over the comms, know that they’re being listened to, don’t care. It was Frank this time, and Mickey is only glad that they forbade Kash from coming on this mission, didn’t want him fucking anything up. 

Mickey bites his lip. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I didn’t think you wanted that.”

Ian looks down at his hands and then back up again. “I’m not very good with this,” he gestures between them, “Domesticity. But I love what we have, Mickey. I love working with you, being with you. I want this to work.”

“What about Kash?” Mickey’s mouth is hesitant, repentant. 

“What about him?” he asks, and he traces something innocuous on the laminate tabletop, shapes, symbols, a heart, a circle, something to keep his hands busy. “Kash taught me everything I know, but he’s not my life anymore. He’s not you.”

“And if he needs help again?”

“I’ll probably come running.” Ian laughs, but it’s not funny. He sounds sad, and he sounds lonely, and he’s sounds apologetic, ashamed. “I can’t promise never to see him again.” 

Mickey pulls in a breath, nods. “Okay,” he says. He places on hand on Ian’s cheek, his thumb stroking the edge of Ian’s mouth. “You have crumbs on your face.”

Ian brings his hand up to fit over Mickey’s, lets Mickey kiss him. 

“Can I get you two anything else?” Fiona asks with a wide smile, one hand on her hip.

Ian looks at Mickey: a question. Mickey nods once, and Ian mouths a confirmation, okay, ready for all of this to get started, ready for all of this to be over. “Actually, yes,” he says, and he turns to face her. 

***

They give her the option; it’s not like they would ever force her. 

They giver her a business card: his (current) name and (current) address. They tell her that they’re friends, that they’re just looking to make him happy, that they don’t have an agenda, they weren’t hired by him to find her or stalk her or hunt her down, they just wanted to let her know that he was alive. 

And it’s true, mostly. 

They follow her for awhile, watch her finish her shift from Mandy’s van parked across the street, watch her lean against the counter at closing, a hand on her face. They listen to her conversation with her boss from the bug they had slipped under the counter on the way out, listen to the pros and cons and what-ifs and maybes, the half-started, half-finished thoughts. He kisses her briefly, unrestrained, and tells her that this is not what she wants, that he’s not what she wants, and if he’s talking about himself or the mark, they don’t know. 

She wavers, and then leaves. 

***

When Jimmy opens the door, she punches him in the face. 

Then, she kisses him. 

***

They stop listening around the twenty-minute mark, when it becomes painfully clear that the hitched breaths in the confines of the kitchen are not sobs or yells, but something else entirely. The last they heard, he was proposing to her (again) and she was telling him to shut the fuck up. 

There was the sound of something being knocked over, and a splash, and Mandy mourns the loss of her bug, planted amongst utensils and rarely-used pots and pans. There’s a fizzle over the line, static, and the comms go quiet.

V, trying to reassure her, says, “Well, at least they’re not fighting.”

Frank - scoping out the house through binoculars, trained on the kitchen window - makes a face. “I wouldn’t be so sure. She just smacked him again.”

“Can’t say he doesn’t deserve it,” Ian breathes over the comms, and everyone hums in agreement. 

“I hope that fucker gets her back,” Mickey says, gruffly, annoyed, but everyone knows that it’s not for Jimmy’s sake. 

Ian looks at him, but Mickey turns away. 

***

Jimmy and Fiona disappear. 

The team counts it as a win. Kash counts it as a close call, never the grateful one, and reluctantly thanks them all, acts as if they were helping themselves more than him. 

Frank discreetly asks Kash never to show up on his team’s doorstep ever again, and Ian can’t resist kissing him one last time, Mickey preoccupying himself with packing up Mandy’s tech, fitting cables into compartments, stowing the comms away. Mandy knows what he’s doing, smiles at him warmly, places one small palm on his shoulder. 

Kash breathes Ian in, doesn’t let go, his arms around him, his hands wide on his back, until Ian asks him to. 

He says, “I could always use your help, you know.”

Ian says, “I know.” He wants to move forward again, kiss him, but stops himself. “But this is my life now. With them. With him.” 

Kash looks sullen, looks away. When he turns back, his face is a mask. “Good luck,” he says, and leaves, closing the door behind him. 

***

After the next job, Mickey gets drunk. It's not even the job, Mickey murmurs into the crook of Ian’s neck on the way home, because the job had been (fairly) easy and (mostly) unemotional and all of them had left with (minimal) bruising and a nice fat check. And that’s exactly what they like in a job, Mickey breathes into Ian’s skin, a bit of a challenge, but a healthy reward at the end of it all. 

Nonetheless, Mickey goes to a bar. He starts with the top shelf liquor and works his way down, slinging back some watery shit that keeps sliding his way over the scratched wood, a woman sitting at the end smiling at him, admiring his scars, pausing every now and then to ask if he’d like to come home with her. He says no, politely, each time, smiling back and tapping his ring finger as if he had somehow misplaced his wedding ring.

He drinks and drinks and closes down the bar, leaving only when it’s last call once, twice, no three times, and the bartender places a beefy hand on Mickey’s shoulder, shaking him, saying, it’s time to go home, sir, and Mickey is saying okay okay shit okay, moving sluggishly across the floor. The air is cool outside, a pleasant exception from the heat that will rise in a few hours, and he sits on the curb and waits for a while, for nothing, for something. He throws the keys to his truck in a ditch; it was stupid to drive here anyway. 

He starts to walk, then leans over and vomits on the concrete, his throat burning, his eyes tearing up, aching. He decides against walking, sitting back down on the curb slowly, carefully, placing a sweaty palm to his face. 

He calls Ian, waking him up; he’s not even a little sorry. 

And then Ian is there to help him get home (get him to their home), fishing his keys out of the grass with little annoyance and climbing behind the wheel of Mickey’s truck, and Mickey cradles one of the bar’s (stolen) whiskey bottles in his fractured hand, in pain in more ways than one, but slowly seeping into this warm, light-headed space of contentment. Or detachment. Or whatever, who cares. 

Ian drags him bodily through the door and dumps him on the couch, sets a glass of water next to him, two tiny blue aspirin, and runs a hand through his hair. “I’ll be upstairs if you need me,” he whispers, and kisses Mickey on the forehead. 

Mickey waits until Ian is almost gone before he says, “I need you.”

Ian stops with one foot on the bottom stair. He doesn’t turn around, and his silhouette is hunched, turned in on himself, ashamed that he’s led them to this place, that they are no longer where they used to be. He takes a deep breath. “I know,” he says. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Stay with me?” Mickey asks, and it’s more than just now, more than just tonight, and they both know this, they both know what he’s really asking. Mickey has never been good with words, but he’s also never been good with hiding his emotions, he’s not a grifter, he’s not a thief. 

Ian turns back, makes his way over to the couch. He gets down on his knees, places both hands on Mickey’s, leans up to kiss him once, kiss him twice. 

Mickey asks it again, this time breathless, this time a whisper that Ian barely hears, a plead that slips its way from Mickey’s lips and out into the air, trailing off, disappearing. “Stay with me?”

Stay with me now, stay with me forever. 

They both know that this is more than just about working well together, they both know that this is something much bigger than that. 

Ian smiles. “Always.”

***

And:

They meet in the South of France. 

They were both working for themselves at the time, Mickey finding whatever he can wherever whenever, moving from city to city and offering his services to anyone desperate enough to hire him. He had a reputation, they both did, but Mickey had a penchant for being ruthless and competent and terrifying, took out some pretty big whales, made some pretty wealthy clients happy, never let trouble catch up to him, had tales of revenge that circled around him for miles. 

Ian was someone to call when you wanted something and you wanted it now, had built up his name from the days he worked with Kash, had moved on to bigger things, more complicated things, things that used to be considered unbreakable, un-stealable, until he set his sights on them. He had a talent, and most people had a need for him to use it. 

It goes like this: Ian was hired to steal something that Mickey possessed. 

Mickey was hired to make sure that Ian could never steal again. 

It’s funny when you think about it. 

Mostly, they don’t. 

***

They danced around each other for a few months, accidentally, and then on purpose.

It came down to: a car chase; some clever repurposing of chopsticks on Mickey’s part; a Mark XIX Desert Eagle that Kash had lent Ian; two bullet wounds (Mickey’s); a broken femur (Ian’s); bruises, blood, money, cigarettes, liquor bottles; Mickey breaking into Ian’s small chateau in the countryside and waiting for him for four days, living on water and canned vegetables and airport paperbacks; Ian breaking into Mickey’s apartment in Brussels (not at the same time), stealing knives and guns and (memorably) Mickey’s entire collection of cookbooks; cold nights spent in dirty cars on surveillance duty, hot sweaty summer days staking out buildings when the air is thick with humidity; Ian hanging delicately above Mickey’s head in an old and tattered harness; Mickey around the corner with a knife in his fist, his knuckles almost touching his nose as he gets ready to swing; a couple of misses, a couple of hits; one tour around the world, no two, no three; stale recycled air in the cabin of a Boeing 747; old, crushed tea leaves dried and sticking to the bottom of a cup; a calling card; a stupid love song from the ‘60s that keeps playing at every diner they almost miss each other in; the ringtone Ian changes on Mickey’s phone (how, he’ll never know); the Fourth of July barbecue that they ruin with a fistfight; cold coffee, hot coffee; breakfast scones that Mickey leaves for Ian one morning; the box of doughnuts that Ian buys for Mickey after he accidentally breaks Mickey’s finger; the night they both come off a rough job, finding each other and not wanting to fight, to speak, to think, Mickey pulling out an old flask and passing it to Ian and Ian accepting it graciously, thirstily; a car accident in the mountains; a fire in the suburbs; the day Mickey saves Ian’s life from a(nother) mercenary; the day Ian wakes Mickey up, tells him that he’s been drugged (not by him), stays with him until he’s okay to stand, to run, to fight; Ian’s favorite bed and breakfast in Connecticut; Mickey’s favorite rib joint in Atlanta; a ripped handwritten note; the Grand Canyon, Disney World, the Empire State Building, the Riverwalk, the French Quarter; Ian getting kicked out of three separate casinos in Las Vegas; Mickey following him; Mickey visiting the Space Needle; Ian following him; a (cold) trip to Alaska; a (warm) trip to Arizona; breakfast, lunch, dinner; a shy smile from across the street; an invitation; an agreement; a choice; a truce; a plan. 

Mickey says, breathless, “We have to stop meeting like this,” and Ian - his hands bloody from where he holds his nose, from where Mickey had lashed out out of reflex when Ian surprised him in the middle of the night - laughs, loudly, his voice warm in the darkness. 

They refused the money, the job, staved off any repercussions with skill, avoided the badmouthing and gossip (their reputations never took a hit), and they found another job to work (together). They lie about how they met to everyone, it was never really anyone’s business, it was never really important in the first place. 

And they disappear.  



End file.
